Sam, five months a starving and battered POW, encounters more startling acts of kindness – a guard even buys him a Gasthaus lunch – along with a couple of bitterweet reminders of home. (August, 1918)

For details of how to buy Sam’s full Memoir(1) in paperback or e-book & excerpted Gallipoli & Somme episode & Arras 1918/POW etc mini-e-books & reader reviews see right-hand column

All proceeds to the British Red Cross

For AUDIO excerpts click Here  Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook Here

Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… The Allies ultimately war-concluding push proceeded on an ever-widening stretch of the Western Front under the overall banners of the Amiens Offensive and the Second Battles Of The Somme.

    The French won the Second Battle Of Noyon (August 17-29) when they took the town, then went on to capture Leury, Juvigny and Coucy (September 1; Coucy about 18 miles east of Noyon). The Second Battle Of Bapaume (August 21-September 3) approached its quietus too when, after two attempts came up short, New Zealand troops, supported by the British, occupied their objective after German forces retreated overnight (August 30) – the Kiwis pressed on to take Frémicourt as the Germans established a temporary stronghold overlooking Haplincourt (four miles east of Bapaume).

    In the Second Battles Of Arras (August 26-September 3), the British widened the attack around Noyon by seven miles, but within that action it was the Canadians who led the way in the Battle Of The Scarpe river (August 26-30), immediately capturing Monchy-le-Preux and Wancourt (six miles southeast of Arras) and advancing to Fresnes Rouvroy (30; 5,800 Canadian casualties).

    Australian troops began one of their greatest campaigns by crossing the Somme at night (August 31) to break German lines at Mont St-Quentin and followed up the next day by ousting the German Army from Péronne (which, like many of the French towns now being recovered, had been occupied since the Spring Offensive – March 24 in the case of Péronne; 3,000 Australian casualties in three days).

    Other deadly actions continued elsewhere, though looking relatively trivial in the perspective of Western Front developments. Around Russia, the ever confusing picture saw Ottoman forces attack the Bolsheviks and Armenians in Baku, Azerbaijan (August 26; 200 British casualties arising too – I haven’t seen an explanation for their presence!), while British troops occupied Krasnodovsk (27; across the Caspian, now in Turkmenistan) and defeated Bolshvik forces 75 miles south of Archangel (31; on the White Sea about 740 miles north of Moscow), and Bolshvik soldiers raided the British Embassy in Petrograd (29).

    Meanwhile, the Austro-Hungarian Army won their last victory of the war when they retook Berat, Albania, from French and Italian troops (August 26), and down in Portuguese East Africa the German guerilla force so durably on the run from the British survived another cornering at the Battle Of Lioma (30-31), slipping away despite 200 casualties to remain on the loose until the end of the war.

[Memoir background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London,16-year-old underage volunteer in September, 1914, fought at Gallipoli with the 2/1st Royal Fusiliers (Blogs September 20, 2015, to January 3, 2016), then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons (Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)… until officialdom spotted his real age – 18, legally too young for the battlefield. So they told him he could take a break from the fighting until he turned 19. He accepted, though with an enduring sense of guilt. December, 1916, saw him posted to Harrogate, Yorkshire, and re-allocated to the Essex Regiment 2/7th Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). He passed many weeks in various hospitals because of a meningitis scare, German Measles, and recovery from the effects of trench warfare’s privations (he spent his 19th birthday, July 6, 1917, in a Sheffield hospital). During that summer, his Company Officer offered him the chance to train for a commission, but Sam detested ordering men around so he refused; he may have requested his subsequent “reversion” to Private, or perhaps it was a “punishment”, I don’t know. Come November/December, 1917, during his final home leave, he assured his parents that he would survive (irrationally, he knew). In December, probably, he returned to France, unattached to any specific Battalion pro tem, and dogsbodied for Brigade HQ in Arras – including excursions to the Front. In mid-March he ran into his own Essex Battalion; they moved into the trenches near Fampoux, about six miles east of Arras… just in time for the opening artillery bombardment of the German Spring Offensive and a last stand by the Battalion on March 28 which left 80 alive and “fit” out of the 520 who started the day – the 440 in between being dead, wounded or, like Sam, “missing” and, in his case, a POW. Then, for three or four months he wandered occupied France in randomly-assembled half-starved POW groups, until a train took his latest band down to a rural area between the Rhine and the Black Forest near a village called Hügelheim where they settled into a slightly less uncomfortable/filthy camp for the summer, mainly working on sick and wounded German war horses.]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

My father, Signaller Sam Sutcliffe, now five months a slowly starving POW, is apparently settled for a while in southern Germany – he and his comrades entirely unaware of promising developments on the Western front, of course. Although the weather and sanitation are better than in the POW camps of occupied France where his ever-changing itinerant band had previously been detained, his preoccupations remain seeking food and avoiding brutal treatment by the guards.

    The last two weeks have gone well, mostly, yielding a shower, clean though flimsy POW uniforms, the surprise provision of some Gutschein voucher “money”, and at least part of an apple pie. Now he encounters further kindnesses… and a couple of odd English connections:

‘A well-dressed, young Unteroffizier(2), apparently on leave from his unit, came over to the stables from his house across the road and chatted with the several German workers at our prison camp who wore the ordinary grey uniforms – the while, he slapped his fine, leather riding boots with a short horsewhip.

     I saw him again later as I was being escorted – on my own for some reason – along a road through the village. This immaculate, non-commissioned officer, pale of face and rather scholarly looking, proved more kindly than his aloof manner had led me to suppose. He spoke to my tubby guard, then turned to me and told me in fair English, pointing to a cottage, that an English lady lived there.

     When he walked off, I looked hopefully at my keeper. Had he understood what the Unteroffizier had said, and would he permit me to approach the cottage? Cut off for so long from contact with civilians, I imagined this would have been a lovely experience, merely to hear the voice of an English lady… I had no thought of involving her in anything so hopeless as an attempt to escape, just a few words, perhaps about her life in Baden before the war…

     No luck, although the lad didn’t hurry me off to work, and showed friendly interest when, above a small shop, I spotted an enamel advertisement which read “Thompson’s Seifenpulver”(3). This must surely refer to a soap powder of English manufacture, famous enough to be sold in even remote parts of Germany. Just this slight proof that some things British had once been acceptable in this now hostile country somehow provided a little reassurance. But I would dearly have prized a few words with that fellow countrywoman.

     I was to spend several more hours with that ruddy, dumpy, humane chap. No soldier he, no Kaiser Wilhelm moustache with long up-pointing ends for my little Posten(4). I saw him blush more than once and wondered if bigger comrades took the mickey because he was shorter than most.

     One morning, arriving at Hügelheim after our walk from the prison camp, he called me from the ranks and led me to a line of ponies tethered to a rail. He detached six of them and gave me their reins, indicating I should hold three in each hand. I’d handled four horses at a time, but six seemed a bit much. He took six himself, though, said “Komm”(5), and we left the gang and set off along a lovely country road – he gave me no idea where to or why. My arms threaded through the reins, my ponies following his, we moved along at a pace I could never have maintained had not the animals almost carried me.

     Looking ahead at possible hazards, I hoped that if anything scared them and they bolted, I would be able to raise my arms and allow the reins to slip off. Past farms and vineyards we proceeded. I felt the weakness of near-starvation dragging at me, but determined that my well-fed companion should see no sign of my plight for I hoped he would choose me for other such outings. To be away from the eyes and curses of the more hate-laden Soldaten(6), to feel that I was worthy of being given responsibility, if only for a few animals…

     All went well. At a village en route, my boss tied up our horses in the yard of the Gasthaus(7) and, to my amazement and delight, took me into the inn and sat me at a well-scrubbed deal table. A couple of minutes later, he called me over to the counter to collect a basin of stew and a hunk of rye bread. I wanted to let him know how I really appreciated this kind treatment and the fact that he paid for the food out of his own pocket but, from my limited vocabulary, I could only manage a “Danke schön”. I believed I knew the meaning of many words, but I felt reluctant to use them, concerned about the risk of offending one whom I wished to please.

     Despite this kindness, the Posten remained correct in his treatment of me, and this I understood, for undue chumminess might have brought rebuke from the several soldiers in the dining room.

     But what particularly added to the pleasure of that day was the fact that nobody commented on my appearance or jeered at me, so obviously an enemy prisoner. They were country folk, compassionate perhaps, or maybe they simply accepted the judgment of the man in charge of me.

     Yet when some of our chaps broke out of the Lager one night and made for nearby Switzerland, landworkers spotted them and men and women armed with pitchforks chased and eventually surrounded them. When some struggled to break away the landworkers beat them. They handed the escapees over to the military. On return to our Gefangenenlager(8), they were punished by solitary confinement and a diet of bread once a day and nothing to drink but cold water.’

(2) Unteroffizier: can mean either “Corporal”, or serve as a generic for non-commissioned officers.

(3) Thompson’s Seifenpulver: “soap powder”; the company, founded by Dr Richard Thompson in Bradford, had long since moved to Düsseldorf.

(4) Posten: guards – though the literal translation is something like “functionary”. This chubby, friendly Posten features often during Sam’s Hügelheim sojourn (since Blog July 15), although he’s never named.

(5) “Komm”: “Come”.

(6) Soldaten: soldier.

(7) Gasthaus: inn or guest house.

(8) Gefangenenlager: prison camp.

All the best– FSS

Next week: Sam and starving POW pals find blessed relief through working in a vineyard… where the fair-minded boss seems to be American, the main customer for the product of their (forced) labour is British and… oh joy, the boss feeds them as he did his “own men”! 

(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote Nobody Of Any Importance, a Memoir of his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.

Sam and starving POW pals wonder what’s going on: new uniforms! money! his first shower since March! new boots! Well, clogs… But still he’s so emaciated “I would not have been recognised by my own father…”

For details of how to buy Sam’s full Memoir(1) in paperback or e-book & excerpted Gallipoli & Somme episode & Arras 1918/POW etc mini-e-books & reader reviews see right-hand column

All proceeds to the British Red Cross

For AUDIO excerpts click Here  Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook Here

Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… The Allies’ ultimately decisive Amiens Offensive (August 8-September 3), which began last week with the Battle Of Amiens (8-11) resulting in a 10-mile advance and 30,000 German prisoners taken, developed further through the continuing Battle Of Montdidier (8-15; about 24 miles southeast of Amiens, Somme department).

    The latter saw British, Canadian, French and Australian troops widen the initial Allied attack and push forward 11 miles by August 13. Meanwhile, the French advanced around Lassigny (13-15; about 38 miles southeast of Amiens) and under general Allied pressure the German Army retreated from the rivers Ancre and Oise (14-15), before holding their ground again for the more extended Second Battle Of Noyon (17-29; about 44 miles southeast of Amiens).

    In other notable Western Front moments, the British began their long-term drive in Flanders (18) and the German long-range gun targetting Paris fired its last shell (15).

    In turmoiled and confused Russia, the Bolsheviks, who had been doing rather badly in the further-flung outposts, took a town called Merv in Transcaspia (now Turkmenistan) from the regional, temporarily independent government (August 15). Otherwise, the redoubtable Czecho-Slovak Legion, spread as it was more or less the length of the Trans-Siberian railway, fought off Bolshevik counterattacks at Irkutsk (16; Siberia) and on the Ussuri river (16; Khabarovsk, far eastern Russia).

    And down in Italy, a long but small part of the campaign to get the Austria-Hungary Army out of Italy began when a surprise attack instigated the Battle Of San Matteo (August 13-September 3; Ortler Alps, northwest Italy) – the highest-altitude battle ever fought at the time – immediately ousting the garrison but then having to defend the gain.

[Memoir background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London,16-year-old underage volunteer in September, 1914, fought at Gallipoli with the 2/1st Royal Fusiliers (Blogs September 20, 2015, to January 3, 2016), then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons (Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)… untilofficialdom spotted his real age – 18, legally too young for the battlefield. So they told him he could take a break from the fighting until he turned 19. He accepted, though with an enduring sense of guilt. December, 1916, saw him posted to Harrogate, Yorkshire, and re-allocated to the Essex Regiment 2/7th Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017).He passed many weeks in various hospitals because of a meningitis scare, German Measles, and recovery from the effects of trench warfare’s privations (he spent his 19th birthday, July 6, 1917, in a Sheffield hospital). During that summer, his Company Officer offered him the chance to train for a commission, but Sam detested ordering men around so he refused; he may have requested his subsequent “reversion” to Private, or perhaps it was a “punishment”, I don’t know. Come November/December, 1917, during his final home leave, he assured his parents that he would survive (irrationally, he knew). In December, probably, he returned to France, unattached to any specific Battalion pro tem, and dogsbodied for Brigade HQ in Arras – including excursions to the Front. In mid-March he ran into his own Essex Battalion; they moved into the trenches near Fampoux, about six miles east of Arras… just in time for the opening artillery bombardment of the German Spring Offensive and a last stand by the Battalion on March 28 which left 80 alive and “fit” out of the 520 who started the day – the 440 in between being dead, wounded or, like Sam, “missing” and, in his case, a POW. Then, for three or four months he wandered occupied France in randomly-assembled half-starved POW groups, until a train took his latest band down to a rural area between the Rhine and the Black Forest near a village called Hügelheim where they settled into a slightly less uncomfortable/filthy camp for the summer, mainly working on sick and wounded German war horses.]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

Of course, my father, Signaller Sam Sutcliffe, four months a POW now and his starving band apparently settled for a while in southern Germany, knew nothing of new developments in the war.

    Last week, he had guard Captain Kayser kick him in the crutch for scrumping and ate raw liver nicked from pigswill by his pal Wally.

    But even amid that demeaning desperation for food, the summer’s sense of things looking up – just a little and relatively – continued when Sam and pals sneaked haircuts with the horse-hospital shears and Kayser decided that was a good idea and brought in regular (rough) barbering for all. Further accommodations followed (alongside continuing starvation and brutality):

‘After that, one Sunday morning, the guards told us to take off our very soiled khaki uniforms. They handed us tunics, trousers and caps, all made of loosely woven, dark-blue material with a wide, orange stripe down each trouser-leg and round the cap. So there we were – socks and underwear unwashed for months, but brand-new uniforms. If only we could somehow have a bath…

     Everything appeared to be going our way, however. Soon, they lined up half our lot in front of an officer and gave each of us several tickets, on which were printed some German words, now only partially remembered – “Kriegsgefangenen Lager Nr. ??”, then cards of different colours printed with “Gutschein für 5 Pfennig(2)” (or 10 or 20). We needed no instruction on what these cards were all about, they were money substitutes. So where could we spend them?

     Next, they marched us off to a railway station where we entered Fourth-Class compartments with hard, wooden seats – just like the hop-pickers’ train in Kent when we were digging the outer London defences back in 1914(3). Britain and Deutschland had that much in common, I thought; the harder you worked, the harder you travelled. But I can well recall the inner pleasure I felt at this seeming return to a more normal sort of life. A clean uniform, some sort of money in my pocket, and a trip on a train to… well, I must wait and see.

     In the excitement, I almost forgot my ever-present hunger. Once more, we crossed the Rhine and this time we detrained at Mühlhausen, which we had passed through on our journey south. As we marched through its main street, I observed the townspeople taking a real interest in the spectacle of these shuffling, bent-kneed, sunken-cheeked beings. Meanwhile, I saw two civilian-dressed men moving among them, apparently answering enquiries about us. “English soldiers – look at the condition to which those people are reduced,” I heard one say. I felt sure we were the first British prisoners of war seen in those parts.

     A busy, prosperous town, Mühlhausen impressed me most with its cleanliness. Not that English towns of those days were dirty(4), but Mühlhausen had a special look in 1918, so well cared for. The housewives must have thought so too, for they, in many cases, hung feather mattresses and quilts over window sills to give them the benefit of the clean, soft air, not deterred therefrom by what the neighbours might think, as would usually be the case in England.

     We entered what appeared to be a large, public building and – more by signs than by word of mouth – were told to remove all our clothing. Ahead sat a man in a white coat to whom, in turn, we each had to present ourselves. He dipped a fairly large brush into a can and painted our scrotums and armpits with blue paste. We moved on to another white coat who shaved off the blue-painted hair.

     Finally, we entered a shower cubicle where the water, though cold, enabled us to make ourselves cleaner than we had been for many a day. Soap was not available, but long-handled brushes vigorously applied did the job. The Treaty of Geneva(5) was working at last, for which I was truly thankful.

     We had no towels so we had to dry our bodies with our trousers or tunics, but I had no complaint, feeling so refreshed by this unexpected cleansing. Unfortunately, I then had to dress myself once more in the rank vest, shirt, pants and socks. But dismay and horror hit me when I realised that my boots had vanished. A quick search of our men’s sacks and bundles failed to restore them to me, so I had to appeal to the Postens who were in charge of us. They said they knew nothing about the theft.

     However, I suspect even they couldn’t face the prospect of walking through the town in full public view with one of their prisoners bare-footed. Perhaps for that reason, they reported my loss to a senior officer at the cleansing station and one of his men handed me a pair of wooden clogs the like of which I had previously seen only in pictures of Dutch working people… at school we’d been told they wore clogs and smoked cigars, even when very young; I had no cigars, but gladly shoved my feet into these hand-carved-from-a-piece-of-wood shoes; I didn’t find them too uncomfortable, except that they cut into my insteps.

     Now I must have really looked the genuine POW in my bright, orange stripes, socks a dirty grey with trousers tucked into them, and those heavy clogs with their pointed toes. Add sunken cheeks, staring eyes and bent knees to the picture – I would not have been recognised by my own father.’

(2) Gutschein für 5 Pfennigs: voucher for 5 “pennies”.

(3) See Blog 23 December 12, 2014. Sam described the carriages conveying his first Battalion, the 2/1st Royal Fusiliers, from billets in Tonbridge to dig a trench system south of London as “Cattle trucks, pigsties, travelling chicken sheds” normally reserved for “Hop-pickers— seasonal migrants, mostly from the city, who worked hard during the few weeks of the harvest. Because they were poor people the railway company had gone to the trouble of constructing this shabby transport for them.”

(4) My father footnoted: “So many of them are in 1976, as I write” – something the older generation of every generation remarks on, no doubt.

(5) Wikipedia says a series of Geneva treaties began with Swiss businessman/social activist Henri Dunant’s reaction to the battle of Solferino, in the kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia, 1859, between French/Sardinian and Austrian Armies; first the Red Cross was formed in Geneva, then in 1864 came the first Geneva Convention, aka “the Red Cross Treaty”; adopted initially by 12 nations, it codified the treatment of sick and wounded soldiers on the battlefield during declared wars, and the neutrality of medical personnel, but said of prisoners only that they should be returned to their country; the list of original signatories varies from source to source, but Wikipedia has, from International Law: A Treatise by Ronald Roxburgh, 1920: Baden, Belgium, Denmark, France, Hesse, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Prussia, Spain, Switzerland and Wurttemberg; another web page now no longer available didn’t show the German then-independent states and added Norway (with the many later ratifiers including Britain and Turkey 1865, Russia 1867, USA 1882); a Convention covering war at sea was added in 1906, then further revisions came long after World War I, in 1929, 1949 (it removed the “declared war” limitation), 1977 and 2005; protection of POWs in World War I depended more on the Hague Regulations of 1899 and 1907 which the war proved deficient, leading in part to the 1929 Geneva Convention revision covering particularly “the prohibition of reprisals and collective penalties”, says http://ow.ly/cLQz30kUrfr.

All the best– FSS

Next week: Sam spends his Gutschein on soap and fags, then sneaks off to buy a pie on the qv from the Hügelheim Gasthaus – and even fantasise about a sweet young girl.

(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote Nobody Of Any Importance, a Memoirof his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.

Sam, fighting starvation as ever, goes scrumping and gets a terrible kick in the crutch from a new taskmaster called Kayser! He also enjoys(?) raw liver nicked from pigs’ swill. But the POWs still strive to retrieve a little self-respect… via some unofficial barbering with horse shears.

For details of how to buy Sam’s full Memoir(1) in paperback or e-book & excerpted Gallipoli & Somme episode & Arras 1918/POW etc mini-e-books & reader reviews see right-hand column

All proceeds to the British Red Cross

For AUDIO excerpts click Here  Join Foot Soldier Sam on Facebook Here

Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… 

[Apologies to regular readers: the blog was late up this week for the first time in four years and there’s no “a hundred years ago this week” section about the wider war before moving on to the weekly except from my father’s Memoir - this is because I’ve been in hospital for the crucial two days and nights on an unscheduled sojourn. All well now and I just got home on Sunday evening to I’ll put the blog up pronto without the historical context… normal service resumes now, through the week, and next Sunday I hope. All the best, Phil pp Sam]

[Memoir background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London, 16-year-old underage volunteer in September, 1914,  fought at Gallipoli with the 2/1st Royal Fusiliers (Blogs September 20, 2015, to January 3, 2016), then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons (Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)… until officialdom spotted his real age – 18, legally too young for the battlefield. So they told him he could take a break from the fighting until he turned 19. He accepted, though with an enduring sense of guilt. December, 1916, saw him posted to Harrogate, Yorkshire, and re-allocated to the Essex Regiment 2/7th Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). He passed many weeks in various hospitals because of a meningitis scare, German Measles, and recovery from the effects of trench warfare’s privations (he spent his 19th birthday, July 6, 1917, at Wharncliffe War Hospital, Sheffield). During that summer, his Company Officer offered him the chance to train for a commission, but Sam detested ordering men around so he refused; he may have requested his subsequent “reversion” to Private, or perhaps it was a “punishment”, I don’t know. Come November/December, 1917, during his final home leave, he assured his parents that he would survive (irrationally, he knew). In December, probably, he returned to France, unattached to any specific Battalion pro tem, and dogsbodied for Brigade HQ in Arras – including excursions to the Front. In mid-March he ran into his own Essex Battalion; they moved into the trenches near Fampoux, about six miles east of Arras… just in time for the opening artillery bombardment of the German Spring Offensive and a last stand by the Battalion on March 28 which left 80 alive and “fit” out of the 520 who started the day – the 440 in between being dead, wounded or, like Sam, “missing” and, in his case, a POW. Then, for three or four months he wandered occupied France in randomly-assembled half-starved POW groups, until a train took his latest band down to a rural area between the Rhine and the Black Forest near a village called Hügelheim where they settled into a slightly less uncomfortable/filthy camp for the summer, mainly working on sick and wounded German war horses.]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

Last week my father, Signaller Sam Sutcliffe, four months a POW now, his starving gang apparently settled for a while in southern Germany, encountered the worst and best of their guards – the more sadistic setting them up for terrible kickings by the horses they’re caring for, a more easygoing bloke allowing them to pick up windfall fruit to assuage their constant hunger.

    Now they continue recent work at an actual horse hospital – maybe the first place had the status of nursing home or similar, for convalescent nags. Sam learns more about different German reactions to scrumping (it’s back to brutal again), eats some horrible stuff from a pig’s trough – and how to sneak a haircut distinctly non-Sassoon style (neither Vidal, nor even Siegfried really):

‘That day we started work on one of several horse hospitals — “Pferde Lazerette(2)” said a notice at the entrance. Another one, where we went on to work quite regularly, was on the other side of Hügelheim(3), the village a couple of kilometres from our Gefangenenlager(4).

     In charge there was a man called Kayser (pronounced as in Kaiser Bill, the great leader of all the Jerries). His glass eye, black beard and jackboots gave him a threatening mien, yet we found him a fair, if surly, taskmaster, and quite easily satisfied if we worked steadily.

     Nonetheless, on one occasion he kicked me right in the crutch with all the strength he could muster. The pain put me down on the floor, and my groin hurt for days, but I made no complaint – it was, as they say, a fair cop. I had noticed a large apple tree in a field adjacent to the stable and, hoping I was unobserved, went scrumping. There being few windfalls, I shook the tree… my big mistake — as the furious Kayser yelled after first coming up quietly behind me and throwing that terrible kick.

     All the pleasant scenery and the quietness of Hügelheim could not fill our empty bellies, so we were ever on the lookout for something to fill the awful void – hence my risky scrumping expedition, of course.

     Wally, the kind friend — as he became — who had invited me to join his Pferde Lazarette party without asking the guard’s permission(5),  found that his job sometimes took him close to pigsties; occasionally, he managed to slide his hand into a trough and pull out some dark-coloured meat which, on close study, appeared to be liver. It smelt unsavoury, but we wiped it and ate the revolting stuff. So robbing pigs of their swill was now our aim in life — though I have since suspected we were laying up stores of health troubles for future days.

     Hügelheim natives proved not unfriendly, although kept at a distance by the Soldaten. One morning when we passed through the village on the way to Kayser’s Pferde Lazerette, a gorgeous aroma of frying bacon greeted us and our Posten(6) certainly took special note of the cottage from which it arose. So, for the whole of that working day, we saw nothing of our fat Jerry friend – and we had a fair idea where he had been lurking. He rejoined our group only as we lined up to return to our Lager, but we refrained from questioning him. Each day thereafter, he disappeared as soon as he’d handed us over to Kayser.

     Every day, we took the horses from the Lazarette to water at a trough in the village, a couple of hundred yards from the stables. One lovely hot day, I took two to water and not a sound was to be heard, even though the inn – Gasthaus – was close by. How peaceful it all was, I thought. Horses satisfied, I was leading them away when suddenly a door slammed and they bolted. I was hanging on to a halter rope with each hand and they dragged me all the way back to the Pferde Lazerette and didn’t stop until they were actually inside their stable.

     That was the only time I saw Kayser laugh, but I didn’t join in.

Few of us liked being scruffy and dirty, and we did try to do something about it when opportunity arose. A chap at the prison camp with whom I had struck up some sort of matiness told me he had seen a Jerry shearing a horse’s coat with a machine powered by a man turning a wheel. He had a good idea: “If we could get into the shearing shed, do you think some of us could cut each other’s hair?”

     So later that day, during the one break from work allowed, some dozen of us climbed through a window at the back of that shed and we were soon shearing as to the manner born. The finished head was near enough bald. How different a man looked to his former shaggy self.

     But, before we’d finished the job, our lookout saw a Jerry approaching and gave the alarm. We rapidly scrambled back out through the window. The man who had been in mid-shear at the moment of emergency rather conspicuously sported only half a haircut – our method had been to start at the nape of the neck and proceed upwards and forwards. Of course, the guards spotted his condition, and we feared all kinds of punishments, but the actual result was that the Captain detailed one of his experts to shear the lot of us. Subsequently, we were able to douse our heads and keep them free of lice.’

(2) Pferde Lazerette: horse hospital.

(3) Hügelheim, in the Baden-Württemberg area known as Markgräflerland, 18.4 miles (29.6 kilometres) west of Mühlhausen/Mulhouse.

(4) Gefangenenlager: prison camp.

(5) See last week’s blog.

(6) Posten: guard here, but maybe “functionary” would be the general translation I gather; he’s the tubby, amiable fellow who let them pick up windfalls.

All the best– FSS

Next week: Sam sings “Everything’s going my way”, maybe even “Oh what a beautiful day” (in his heart anyway) as Mr Nice German Guard discovers the Treaty Of Geneva for reasons which will become apparent in a bit. Clean POW uniforms! soap! his first shower since March! new shoes! Despite that, he’s so emaciated he reckons “I would not have been recognised by my own father”…

(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote Nobody Of Any Importance, a Memoirof his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.

Sam and half-starved POW pals get the worst and best of their German guards – set up for a kicking from the sick war horses they’re tending… but then offered the blessing of windfall greengages

For details of how to buy Sam’s full Memoir(1) in paperback or e-book & excerpted Gallipoli & Somme episode & Arras 1918/POW etc mini-e-books & reader reviews see right-hand column

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Dear all

A hundred years ago this week… The final bloody phases of World War 1’s key turnaround campaign , the Second Battle Of The Marne (July 15-August 1/4/5/6 by different counts) played out with combined Allied forces reversing what began with a German attack and ended in near-rout.

    They assailed the German lines north of Oulchy-le-Château (July 29; Aisne department, 13 miles south of Soissons) with the French taking Grand Rozoy, the French and the British Buzancy, while further north the Australians occupied Merris (Nord department). Although the German Army mounted a strong counterattack the next day, it failed and the Americans occupied Seringes-et-Nesles, northeast of Fere-en-Tardennois (July 31), with the whole Allied line then advancing five miles and the great battle’s major shifts concluding when Soissons fell to the French (August 2; occupied by a German advance on May 29). The Germans fell back across the rivers Vesle and Ancre as the action subsided (August 3).

    In Russia – the “Eastern Front” having become a different kind of chaos altogether – German invasion, revolution, counter-revolution and multi-faceted Allied invasions continued their Jackson Pollock military-political spatterings on a vast canvas. Down in Ukraine, the governor under the German military dictatorship declared on April 29, Field Marshall Von Eichhorn was assassinated by Socialist Revolutionaries – as distinct from Bolsheviks (July 30). On successive days, an Allied Expeditionary Force overcame the defences of Russian White Sea port Archangel, a thousand miles north of Moscow, and a pro-Allied revolution in the city ousted the Bolsheviks and welcomed them in (August 1-2).  Meanwhile, 5,600 miles west of Moscow, British troops landed at Vladivostok (3; lately occupied by Allied allies the Czechoslovak Legions). Further, British troops reached Baku on the Caspian (4) where they became involved in one of the most complicated corners of the whole war, drawing in forces from Bolshevik and Menshevik Russia versus the Muslim Azerbaijan Democratic republic, established May 28, supported by the Ottoman Empire. Confused? They may have been. More later on that one…

[Memoir background: my father, Lance Corporal Signaller Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London, 16-year-old underage volunteer in September, 1914, fought at Gallipoli with the 2/1st Royal Fusiliers (Blogs September 20, 2015, to January 3, 2016), then on the Somme Front with his second outfit, the Kensingtons (Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)… until officialdom spotted his real age – 18, legally too young for the battlefield. So they told him he could take a break from the fighting until he turned 19. He accepted, though with an enduring sense of guilt. December, 1916, saw him posted to Harrogate, Yorkshire, and re-allocated to the Essex Regiment 2/7th Battalion (Blogs November 27, 2016, to November 11, 2017). He passed many weeks in various hospitals because of a meningitis scare, German Measles, and recovery from the effects of trench warfare’s privations (he spent his 19th birthday, July 6, 1917, at Wharncliffe War Hospital, Sheffield). During that summer, his Company Officer offered him the chance to train for a commission, but Sam detested ordering men around so he refused; he may have requested his subsequent “reversion” to Private, or perhaps it was a “punishment”, I don’t know. Come November/December, 1917, during his final home leave, he assured his parents that he would survive (irrationally, he knew). In December, probably, he returned to France, unattached to any specific Battalion pro tem, and dogsbodied for Brigade HQ in Arras – including excursions to the Front. In mid-March he ran into his own Essex Battalion; they moved into the trenches near Fampoux, about six miles east of Arras… just in time for the opening artillery bombardment of the German Spring Offensive and a last stand by the Battalion on March 28 which left 80 alive and “fit” out of the 520 who started the day – the 440 in between being dead, wounded or, like Sam, “missing” and, in his case, a POW. Then, for three or four months he wandered occupied France in randomly-assembled half-starved POW groups, until a train took his latest band down to a rural area between the Rhine and the Black Forest near a village called Hügelheim where they settled into a less uncomfortable/filthy camp for the summer, mainly working on sick and wounded German war horses.]

FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS

Last week my father, Signaller Sam Sutcliffe, encountered a distraction from the POW’s obsession with sneaking any edible morsel available anywhere – a personal/ethical problem about whether he should parlay his smattering of picked-up German into an offered and potentially privileged position as a camp translator (Dolmetscher). Having seen other occupants of these posts take on their more aggressive guards’ characteristics, Animal Farm-style, he decided against.

    Now he moves on to further experiences of guard brutality… and also surprising kindness:

‘On the camp’s Sunday “day off”, a few prisoners went out to the stables just to feed and water the horses, but nobody did any grooming, as the Germans observed the Sabbath. We could stroll around inside the barbed wire or, when the sun shone, we would lie on the ground in a space between the huts and feel free to chat, stretch luxuriously, and perhaps reminisce about life before we became captives.

     Warm days – July, August, by then, I’m not sure – tempted the Kapitän to have a number of horses, who were nearing recovery from their ailments, released from the stables into a nearby field. The beasties went berserk. They raced about and frolicked and kicked each other, a joy to behold.

     One of those horses needed its regular treatment during that afternoon and a small, but tough, British lad was told to take a rope and lead it out of the field. But, as he approached, some frisky beasts circled around him and turned their hindquarters towards him. Kicks rained on the poor boy. Grabbing pitchforks or anything handy, some of us tried to break up the ring, but it took some moments and, by the time we rescued him, his injuries were many and awful.

     We blamed German callousness for sending in one lad when the horses were so excited – and it was said that some of the guards stood laughing during the incident.

     On other occasions, to a lesser degree, I found myself on the receiving end from both animals and guards. They ordered me to lead a big stallion through a small gap between a stable wall and a line of young fillies tethered with their hindquarters towards me. I just had to keep going while each filly in turn lashed out at the stallion as we passed. That huge brute took fewer kicks than I did. And I definitely heard laughter behind me and assumed it was a put-up job.

     Shortly after that incident, a guard took me to a stable in which I had not worked before and told me to groom an animal somewhat larger than a donkey, but smaller than the average pony. Several Germans stood around. As I went into its stall the thing commenced kicking. “Arbeit! Fest Arbeit!”(2) yelled the watching Germans, laughing as I tried to keep close to the mad creature to lessen the effect of its kicks. Occasionally, I made contact with the currycomb, sometimes achieved a stroke with the brush, but I directed most of my efforts towards avoidance of being kicked to death.

One morning, as we shuffled out of the compound and started to form into our usual work groups, a chap shorter even than my 5ft 8½ inches, gripped one of my cuffs and whispered “Come with my little lot today”. So I stood with him and about four others and, when the boss shouted “Vorwärts!”, our small party turned in the opposite direction to the usual one. Accompanied by just one Posten(3), we set off on a longish, uphill walk.

     Sheer cheek appeared to have paid off, for no complaint about my presence came from the Posten. In fact, as we marched along the lovely country roads the rather obese German, a country lad if ever I saw one, said the odd word to me. I learned he had worked in London for some months in a hotel.

     Among the hedgerows some big fruit trees grew, and I saw one young farmhand at the top of a ladder filling a basket with those fine big plums sold in England back then as Christmas gifts in pretty boxes(4). Perhaps realising how our mouths watered, our tubby Posten told us we could help ourselves to any windfalls lying in our path and some sweet greengages helped to assuage hunger pangs on such days as I was able to get a place at the front of the group…’

(2) “Arbeit! Fest Arbeit!”: “Work! Work hard!”

(3) Posten: seems to mean something like “a person in a job”; it doesn’t translate specifically as “guard”, but, clearly, my father heard it used as a generic for the men guarding him.

(4) Fruit had become a common Christmas present through the Victorian era in all social classes – the amount, type, and presentation varying according to means, of course.

All the best– FSS

Next week: Sam judges a new taskmaster called Kayser “fair, if surly” – despite a kick in the crutch that made “my groin hurt for days”! Fighting starvation remains the POWs’ obsession: scrumping, picking raw liver out of pigs’ swill – but also a small bid for self-respect via some unofficial barbering with horse shears…

(1) In his 70s, Sam Sutcliffe wrote Nobody Of Any Importance, a Memoirof his life from childhood through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919 Peace parade.